These biographical patterns are important for a number of reasons. First, the gath- ering of socialist doctors and ‘medical missionaries’ made the ZVG qualitatively different from other institutions in the German health service; there was nothing like it anywhere else. Elsewhere, individual communists were appointed to public health administrative posts, but they were isolated and often had difficult relation- ships with the occupiers.141 In the ZVG, politically active doctors made up the majority, and communists occupied some of the key administrative positions: those in charge of appointments, personnel policy, and organization.142 Second, the composition of the ZVG (the SPD and KPD factions and the third group) resulted in obvious clashes, not just between the two party sets but also between them and their non-political colleagues.
The old animosities between the KPD and SPD sets survived, after April 1946, when the Socialist Unity Party (SED) was created in the Soviet zone by the enforced merger of both parties. The way in which they presented themselves at meetings and during discussions with other health officers in the immediate post-war years demonstrates the survival of their party identities. At a meeting of health officers from the Soviet zone, Lehmann introduced himself with the words ‘I am speaking here as a representative of the social democrats’.143 At similar meetings, Zetkin at times defended the ‘socialists’ position’.144
Tensions and open disagreements between SPD and KPD people ranged from contrary assessments of the political situation to frustrations about personnel poli- tics. The social democrat Max Klesse, a vociferous letter writer, was often critical of communist (and Soviet) strategies. In a letter to Zetkin, he criticized the KPD’s proclamations on the extensive German support of the Hitler regime and the lack of any real resistance. As somebody who had spent all twelve years of Nazi rule inside Germany, he wrote, he had experienced how ‘even old communists and socialists, trembling with anxiety, had taken our flyers to the Gestapo or refused to
140 ‘Kampfgefährte’, Moritz Mebel interview with the author, held on 22 July 2003 in Berlin. 141 In the British zone, Friedrich Dettmann (born 1897) was temporarily head of the health depart-
ment at the Hamburg Senate; Emil Matthews (born in 1895) was minister of public health for Schleswig-Holstein. Both were members of the KPD. NA, Fo 1082/4 ‘Who’s who in the British Zone of Germany, with biographical notes on 300 Germans in key positions’, 1946. In 1950, the Hamburg Senate ordered Dettmann’s arrest following his participation in a demonstration. Walther Killy (ed.),
Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie, ii (Munich, 1995).
142 Leo/Lettow, Schölmerich, and Coutelle were all in charge of personnel. Schölmerich, Coutelle,
and Neumann were in charge of organization and planning. No non-KPD member occupied either position.
143 BAB, DQ1/1338, ‘Diskussion zum Referat von Dr Holling auf der dritten Tagung der Leiter
der Landes- und Provinzial-Gesundheitsämter am 10. November 1945’.
144 BAB, DQ1/1338, ‘Diskussion zum Referat DrDr Harms auf der 4.Tagung der Leiter der
hide typewriters or copy machines even for one day, or who refused to house Jews for a single night’. And he knew that ‘the nerves of the people had already been shattered by the bombing campaigns, they had no strength left to actively resist or fight an illegal battle against Hitler and as a result they gave in to the Nazi terror without resistance!’ The SED may have realized this by now, he wrote, but to Marxists, who were able to distinguish between the ruling and the ruled, this mis- understanding of the guilt question should not have arisen in the first place.145
Apart from general disagreements, personnel policy was an issue that frustrated the social democrats, not least because they suspected favourable treatment of their KPD colleagues by the Soviet forces. The reality was more complicated. As Naimark has shown, ‘Soviet commandants carefully nurtured the other parties and involved them in local government. They aided the SPD, in particular, more scrupulously than the KPD would have liked, creating the impression among some social- democratic leaders that the Soviets actually preferred working with SPD politi- cians.’146 Moreover, in the ZVG the situation was skewed by the fact that Zetkin was not just a communist, but one of those few Germans with Soviet citizenship, who blurred the line between Soviets and Germans in charge.147
The case of Paul Konitzer was also not typical for the treatment of social demo- crats. As first president of the ZVG, the Soviets had approved Konitzer’s appoint- ment, and had listened to and respected him,148 until he was arrested in February 1947 and apparently hanged himself in prison in April 1947, while awaiting his trial. What had happened? Following his career as public health activist and social hygienist and his dismissal in 1933, Konitzer had been drafted into the Wehr- macht in 1939. From 1941 he worked as a chief staff surgeon in Wehrkreis IV (Dresden, Saxony) and was the doctor in charge of a PoW camp in Zeithain, Saxony. Zeithain was liberated by the Red Army on 23 April 1945. In 1946 the Soviet authorities discovered the bodies of tens of thousands of Russian PoWs, who had perished as a result of typhus and other epidemics which were rampant in the camp. An investigative commission reported over 35,000 bodies in mass graves, and the Soviet authorities held Konitzer responsible.149 The Soviets said that the 145 BBAW, Zetkin Nachlass, Max Klesse to Genosse Zetkin, 26 oct. 1946. Klesse to Zetkin, 27
oct. 1946.
146 Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Occupation Zone, 1945– 1949 (Cambridge, 1997), 272.
147 Naimark, Russians in Germany, 292ff. Apart from Zetkin, two individuals which are hard to
place in this way include Wladimir Lindenberg (1905) and Robert von Radetzky (1899): both were born in Moscow, but had trained and lived in Germany for decades.
148 on 28 Aug. 1946 the SMAG decorated him for ‘successful work in the democratic reconstruc-
tion of local administrations’, see Udo Schagen, ‘Kongruenz der Gesundheitspolitik in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone?’, in Wolfgang Woelk and Jörg Vögele (eds.), Geschichte der Gesundheitspolitik in
Deutschland: Von der Weimarer Republik bis in die Frühgeschichte der ‘doppelten Staatsgründung’ (Berlin,
2002), 397.
149 ‘Das Russengrab bei Zeithain: Präsident Konitzers Kriegdienste’, Der Spiegel, 1 Mar. 1947, 4.
Also see Jens Nagel, ‘Das Massensterben sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener 1941 bis 1944: Zur Rolle des Wehrmachtarztes im Wehrkreiskommando IV Dresden Dr Paul Konitzer (1894–1947)’, in Böhm and Haase (eds.), Täterschaft—Strafverfolgung—Schuldentlastung, 93–118. Peter Schneck, ‘Paul Konitzer (1894–1947): Hygieniker, Amtsarzt, Sozialmediziner, Gesundheitspolitiker’, NTM:
deaths of their own citizens was not an issue on which a compromise could be made, even if in this case it concerned a German political ally.150
Konitzer’s fate stands out. Social democrats also directed other central adminis- trations, and none died in such ambiguous circumstances. A number of social democratic doctors later left the Soviet zone and resumed their careers in the West, while others continued to thrive and prosper in the Soviet zone/GDR. Alfred Beyer, for example, had a dazzling career as one of East Germany’s most celebrated social hygienists. However, tensions between SPD and KPD members were far from negligible in the ZVG’s personnel politics. That Konitzer, before his death, was right at the heart of it, is revealed in a letter by Zetkin to the SED’s central committee on his worries about Konitzer’s reliability. Schölmerich had reported on Konitzer’s openly anti-Soviet views, Zetkin wrote. Konitzer had apparently com- plained that ‘he could not agree with Russian personnel policy, nor Russian policy generally. A main factor was that they were badly advised, especially by people like comrade Ulbricht. This situation had to end, this much had been agreed in his close circle.’ Zetkin suspected sabotage when Konitzer suddenly changed his mind on issues that had already been agreed, and had an ‘of course unproven—suspicion that K. wanted to demonstrate that the personnel policy of the Soviet Military Administration will lead to our organisation’s standstill’. It was also suspicious, Zetkin wrote, that Klingelhöfer and her husband, both of whom were active social democrats, were apparently meeting with Konitzer in private.151 Zetkin wanted to inform the Soviet authorities that in spite of pro-Soviet statements, Konitzer could not be seen as reliable: ‘K.’s heart is not with us’. He asked the central committee to find a party comrade who could, should it become necessary, take over, although he noted that Konitzer probably had to stay for now for reasons of political expedi- ency.152 That letter was written in November 1946. In early January 1947, Zetkin was speculating in a note to Klesse about an imminent change in the ZVG’s leader- ship. on 18 February 1947 Konitzer was sacked and arrested, and by 22 April he was dead.
As real as these divisions were, those between the SPD and KPD members and their non-political colleagues were often deeper. Minutes of meetings and private correspondence contain details of repeated disagreements and open hostilities. We have seen above that those upholding the apolitical ideal of medical practice essentially equated ‘Nazi medicine’ with that of the commu- nists and socialists. To both the KPD and SPD sets this equation was unacceptable.
A good illustration is an exchange at a meeting in November 1945 on the issue of doctors becoming organized within the new trade unions. The debate centred on the question of whether the majority of German doctors were ready for this
150 Moser, ‘Im Interesse der Volksgesundheit …’, 269 n. 863. Ernst, ‘Die beste Prophylaxe’.
151 Katharina Klingelhöfer’s husband was Gustav Klingelhöfer, who in 1945 ran the political office
of the Berlin SPD and from 1946 headed the economic department of the Berlin Magistrat, see Dege- ners Wer ist’s? (12th edn. 1955).
kind of organization, and whether ex-Nazi Party members should be allowed to join. Max Klesse countered objections by saying: ‘It is not that all doctors have to join the trade union. Why urge the Nazis anyway? It is crucial that especially the left-wing doctors (Linksärzte) are admitted to the trade unions as quickly as pos- sible, because they are those who are most fed up. We have not had any representa- tion since the one that cancelled Marxist doctors’ salaries. We urgently need our representation now.’ Hermann Bermann, the head of the medical affairs depart- ment, warned about Klesse’s proposals: the splitting of the medical profession into those in and those not in the trade unions had to be prevented by all means; ‘[i]f and when we join, we must all join’.153 To Klesse’s outraged reply that there could be no compulsion, Bermann answered: ‘There must be a compulsory organization, otherwise nothing will ever be achieved for the doctor.’ To Klesse, whose political allegiances came before the membership of any professional club, this unity of the medical profession was a myth, at least since 1933.154 In contrast, the non-political doctors thought that ‘by joining trade unions they would be sucked into the mine- field of far-left politics’.155
Klesse’s letters also reveal regular run-ins which were often not even about spe- cific issues so much as a more general kind of loathing. In May 1946 he com- plained to Zetkin and Schölmerich about Friedrich von Bergmann, who had since 1938 been active as a doctor of the Sturmabteilung (SA) and now headed the sci- ences department of the ZVG.156 Klesse suspected that the delays and seeming incompetence of Bergmann’s department masked a deliberate boycott and sabo- tage of the ‘progressive’ doctors’ input. Bergmann, he wrote, ‘who systematically sabotages our work, slows it down or messes it up, must in my opinion be replaced soon if Dept. 1 is to achieve anything. If it was not for my duty as a socialist to help you and hold out for your sake in this outfit, at least until enough new socialists can be found, I would have long preferred to re-open my practice instead of being annoyed all the time by this damn bourgeois and harmful windbag. At any rate, he probably arranges things deliberately (or out of stupidity?) in such a way that we look bad.’157
on this particular occasion, Klesse explained in a letter to Konitzer, Bergmann and others had made snide comments on his ‘Marxist tendencies’, and, more
153 Hermann Bermann (born 1900) had worked at Hygiene Institute in Landsberg until 1933, was
sacked as ‘non-Aryan’ but given a licence to practise. He joined the SPD for the first time after 1945, and was not part of the SPD described here. Zetkin classified him as a ‘petty-bourgeois reactionary’ who openly criticized communism and socialism. See Zetkin, ‘Charakteristik’, 15.
154 BAB, DQ1/1338, ‘Diskussion zum Referat von Dr Hess auf der 3.Tagung der Leiter der Landes-
und Provinzialgesundheitsämter am 11. November 1945 in der ZV.Gesundheitswesen’, 7, 9.
155 Dr Gysi in BAB, DQ1/1338, ‘Protokoll der 4. Tagung der Leiter der LGA vom 12./13.1.1946’,
375. The professional organization of doctors in the Soviet zone is discussed by Ernst, ‘Die beste
Prophylaxe’. on doctors on the FDGB, see BAB, DQ1/1524, ‘Neuaufbau des Gesundheitswesens’,
Deutsche Volkszeitung, 18 Nov. 1945.
156 Friedrich Ernst von Bergmann: born 1907 into a famous doctor family. His father was Ernst
von Bergmann (1836–1907), a famous German surgeon. Friedrich worked at pharmacological insti- tutes in Munich and Berlin from 1932, from 1938 he was a doctor with the SA. Zetkin, ‘Charakter- istik’, 8.
seriously, had boycotted his proposals for creating new courses in social pathology. Bergmann’s work methods and his ‘constant sabotage of any kind of education of doctors according to socialist principles’ had driven Klesse to open dispute. Bergmann’s behaviour in the past, he said, had been ‘at the same time petty-minded and unreasonable as much as stupid and arrogant, as only a bourgeois can be!’ Klesse also resented that ‘the bourgeois Bruno Harms’ had tried to take sides (obviously not Klesse’s), since Harms ‘can hardly comprehend the disagreements of a socialist with a bourgeois’.158 At exactly the same time Harms gave evidence for Sauerbruch and joined the Magistrat Health Department (see above).
In March 1946, Klesse informed Zetkin that he would resign from the ZVG. While he had enjoyed working with the comrades, he wrote, the daily frustra- tions caused by the regular clashes were becoming too much. He wanted to inform Zetkin in advance so that a socialist could be found as his replacement. People like Harms, Bergmann, and Friedrich Bentzin (a long-standing military doctor who now headed a sub-department and was a friend of Bergmann’s159) must not, Klesse insisted, be allowed to gain the upper hand: ‘apart from you [Zetkin], Schölmerich, Lettow and Lindenberg I cannot see any determined men who could when necessary stand against these growing reactionary cir- cles’.160 To fill important positions with ‘active army officers à la Benzin [Bentzin] is absolutely unacceptable from the socialist perspective, since they will change the character of the whole ZVG, first only in individual departments, but increas- ingly also in its entirety’.161 on this occasion Zetkin persuaded Klesse to stay, and told him that he could not afford to lose any socialists. In January 1947, when Klesse actually resigned, Zetkin reiterated that it was important that ‘we have as many socialists in the system as possible’, given that in the impending reorganization following Konitzer’s demise a non-socialist might take over as president of the ZVG.162
In contrast to the Magistrat personnel, the KPD and SPD health officers of the ZVG wrote and thought very differently both about their past careers and present responsibilities. Magistrat health officers characterized their ideal medicine as stripped of all party politics, and detected antecedents of this apolitical medical practice in their own careers and in German medical traditions. In contrast, the SPD and KPD personnel identified a history of German political-medical activism which was also in part exemplified by their own careers. While working as medical
158 BBAW, Zetkin Nachlass, Max Klesse to the President (Konitzer), 23 May 1946.
159 Friedrich Bentzin (born in 1912), military doctor from 1936 until 1945, had been in the Stahl-
helm. See Zetkin, ‘Charakteristik’.
160 Wladimir Lindenberg (born 1905 in Moscow), trained and worked in Germany. He took his
medical examination in Bonn in 1927, from 1930 to 1936 worked on the specialist ward for brain damage and at the Institute of Clinical Psychology, both in Bonn. He was arrested in 1937 and spent several years in prison and one year in a concentration camp. From 1941 to 1945 he worked for a private firm as scientific adviser. After 1945, Zetkin classified him as an ally of the KPD. Zetkin, ‘Charakteristik’.
161 BBAW, Zetkin Nachlass, Max Klesse to Genosse Zetkin, 3 Mar. 1946.
162 BBAW, Zetkin Nachlass, Zetkin to Klesse, 8 Jan. 1947. The new president—the dermatologist
officers, many had argued that the doctors, the natural advocates of the sick and needy, had to tackle not just the symptoms but also the social causes of illness and disease. In 1928 Friedrich Wolf argued that the living conditions in the proletarian inner-city districts of Berlin were directly responsible for their high rates of tuber- culosis and infant mortality. Because these living conditions were a reflection of their economic situation, Wolf insisted that the engaged doctor’s job could not simply consist in vaccinating or handing out drugs. Doctors had to educate the working class, press for both smaller and more substantial social reforms, and ulti- mately help to bring about a proletarian revolution.163 of course, there were disa- greements on whether they were primarily to represent the revolutionary proletariat, the socialist state, or insurance schemes, but all had clearly identified political, not merely medical, responsibilities.
Their argument on the political role of doctors acquired a new dimension with the rise of Nazism, often articulated in articles of the International Medical Bulletin—a journal founded by a long-term member of the Association of Socialist Doctors, Ewald Fabian, and published in Prague from 1934 until the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, then in Paris from 1938 until mid-1939.164 Apart from reports on the persecution of Jewish doctors and the dismantling of progressive welfare and health institutions in Germany, the journal published clear statements on the political dimension of doctors’ work. Its first issue contained a manifesto, which proclaimed: ‘Socialist doctors want to contribute to making the proletariat physically and psychologically fit for the struggle of its liberation. The feeling of soli- darity drives the socialist doctors to the side of the struggling proletariat, which has in capitalism seen the deepest misery and wretchedness and which wants to liberate humanity from this monstrous system by fighting for socialism.’ The socialist doc-